Chrome continues surge as IE drops below 60% market share | Hacker News Reader

Chrome continues surge as IE drops below 60% market share

arstechnica.com

73 pointsevo_959 comments

Waiting for the day IE goes down to single digit. Even if IE8/9 is the most compliant browser in their history, you can never trust them when it comes to embracing open standards. For the longest time they held the whole web back from innovation.

I still remember countless hours of IE hacks. DIE, DIE!

I've cursed IE every bit as the next guy, but your hatred is astonishingly misguided. ActiveX aside, during '96 through '00, Microsoft innovated web properties more than any browser since. It wasn't until standards zealots and the DOJ were breathing down Microsofts back that MS fell into a rut.

And how are those standards working for us today? Still stuck in '99 with 4.01. HTML innovation stalled time and again. ECMAScript innovation stalled time and again. CSS innovation stalled time and again. Staggered feature support everywhere -- not just IE.

Let's face it, every "standard" at the front of web browsing has, for the better part, failed. I'm no proponent for Flash -- in particular, how some people use it, but Macromedia/Adobe got it right -- moving extraordinarily fast compared to the glacial pace at which the Microsoft, Mozilla, or the W3C have moved.

How have those standards worked out for us today?

Now I can develop for Firefox, and know it is going to work in Safari, Opera, Chrome, etc... I know it is going to work on most mobile devices, TVs, and iPads.

We can do amazing things like Google Mail, which is still faster and better than Outlook. All these without having to worry about ActiveX crashing the browser.

I am not sure what you are looking at, maybe you are only interested in Flash games and vector animation.

Let's talk about "standards" clear (working drafts) throat...

I seriously doubt one can innovate on the web, without using cross-browser hacks to only support the non-IE crowd. Even "standards" as simple as the DOM would have you jumping through hoops, but don't believe me... http://ejohn.org/blog/the-dom-is-a-mess/.

Or something as simple as .nodeName from the HTML 5 spec? http://ejohn.org/blog/nodename-case-sensitivity/

How about something as "simple" as border-radius? That's right, I can easily make a mess of every browser.

Google Mail, as a browser front-end, is only amazing by virtue of innovations made by Microsoft and very little to do with anything since. Little to do with "standards" of today. Faster than Outlook? No; how? Better? Sure, but only because it is more accessible to me. Nothing to do with ActiveX, or shall I pontificate how GMail sucks because Firefox is a hungry beast and crashes under its own weight? No, that would make zero sense.

I am looking to create good and fun websites and not sitting around to complain about how my job isn't made easy, because every browser has different levels of support. And believe me, I've been waiting a long time -- longer than you seem to grok -- for the W3C to "standardize" vector animation. Still waiting. Can't wait for the web to be free of these working groups and zealots.

OK, so your point is that it is not perfect? Well what API is?

Things are a lot better than they have been, things are getting better every year.

Correct, and all I am presenting is that it is very shortsighted to suggest IE hasn't, doesn't, or won't innovate. And frankly, and again, the IE4 through IE6 era saw more innovation (and speed of innovation) than we have seen since. It's hardly Microsoft's fault they were asked to stop innovating, after IE6, and it is much less their fault no one has been "innovating" until just recently.

Flash filled -- fills -- a lot of gaps.

ECMA tried to make a splash with CLI.

Me? I stopped support of IE6, outside of what is easily hidden in libraries / wrappers, which means I can support almost everything still. As well, I use, support, and contribute to Chromium.

> Now I can develop for Firefox, and know it is going to work in Safari, Opera, Chrome, etc...

Not in my experience; there are all sorts of nooks and crannies that catch you out between those browsers (not that IE isn't worse of course :))

The issue with pointing out MS innovations from over a decade ago is that the only thing that matters with web technology is what's happening NOW. IE refuses to keep up with the way things are headed, and has essentially made its previous accomplishments irrelevant.

How is this even true? The IE8 and IE9 teams have been making great strides to get back into the game. Again, it is only "standards" groups and the DOJ that forced Microsoft's hand out of innovating the browser space. Just look at IE's filter or behavior system(s), if you are unfamiliar with or have forgotten how IE innovated long before we had all been told to wait for a standard to be established -- every bit as "standard" as the now -moz, -o, -webkit key-prefixes.

Besides, the question was whether IE has held innovation. They have not. They were asked to stop for deliberations; they did; we are still waiting. It's hardly Microsoft's fault IE6 was so innovative that "NOW" browsers have yet to move against IE like IE moved against its competitors during the years of IE4 and IE6 (IE5 Mac).

The point being, waiting for "standards" to be signed, sealed, and delivered is all that has been holding back innovation. Once out of that rut, we can start pushing cool technology. ECMA CLI in browsers? Now that is innovation, snuffed.

The DOJ settlement hardly forced Microsoft to stop innovating or investing in the browser.

Microsoft did that on their own, and are now finding it hard to just pull even with everyone else.

Nice revisionist history though, the DOJ is a nice scapegoat to cover for the fact that they did nothing with IE until recently.

Why did the DOJ decision not affect recent innovation, then?

Right. Specious argument. Gotcha.

In fact, the MS v. DOJ case paved the way for heavy, government regulation in an industry that was relatively free of government. (Re: http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/v21n2/friedman.html)

We don't want IE "innovating". If the W3C and anti-trust investigations achieved that then great. You seem to think that GMail on my phone or linux machine is somehow thanks to Microsoft trying to tie the web to ActiveX, and therefore Windows. What it is really thanks to is guerilla standardisation by the other browsers, reverse engineering the dominant browser to deliver value to users while Redmond slept.

Please don't mindlessly repeat Microsoft's line about having to wait for standards to be signed, sealed, and delivered. It's just spin. They have a broken development model (and a financial interest in holding back the web) and that is no-one's fault but their own.

On contrary, "we" want nothing of the sort. Maybe those too young to remember the advances made from IE4 through IE6, those may not understand how Microsoft set up how you and I use the web today. You seem to be missing the point. It's not Microsoft's job to make GMail work on your phone or linux; _however_, Microsoft's pushing the buck (even if proprietary) did push the browser market forward leaps and bounds. GMail hinges heavily on a little technology we know as XMLHTTP. Take a guess who championed the tech; take a guess how long before standards zealots published a specification draft. (MS '99; W3C '06)

Redmond has been sleeping, no doubt. But that is neither here nor there. It's refreshing to see other browser teams giving the IE team a run for their money and whipping them into shape -- they've been needing that for almost 10 years, finally getting them off their laurels. Competition is the best part of the space, and that should include innovative APIs (not yet standard) that us engineers can exploit to make our applications better, faster, or stronger. I'm certainly not going to wait for some standards committee to deliberate for 8 years over some monolithic spec that every browser will get wrong anyhow, as history has shown.

Yes, I know about XmlHttpRequest, that's the guerrilla standardisation of Windows-only ActiveX features I was talking about. Relevant historical timeline is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest#History_and_supp...

You'll note the browsers implemented it before standardisation, as is traditional and sensible despite Microsoft's fervent myth-making to the contrary.

(I note that you now seem to be claiming that IE was simply resting on its laurels in a turtle vs hare fashion, rather than being forced into retirement by over-regulation)

Fuck IE, it just needs to be called what it truly is: a failure, a blight on the web, a cynical door stop to lock in the desktop cash cow monopoly.

I hope Microsoft falls for the thousands of hours they've forced me to waste over the course of years of web development. I ain't getting that time back! As much as Apple now holds the champion belt for hating software developers, Microsoft was the original baddy.

Good news IE continues to lose market share. Bad news IE6 continues NOT losing market share. cry

Though it really depends on your market as their final pie chart shows. I know our stats show that IE6 barely gets a look in so we have dumped supporting it as the hassle was too great.

The more people that dump supporting it the better. Once enough sites break and pop up a "Your browser is too old!" message, it will eventually piss off the right executives to get IE6 dumped out of corporate environment.

An anecdote that you can extrapolate at will. I remember a while back my dad (an EVP at a large chemical company, not exactly bleeding edge IT considering they had Windows 2000 after Vista was out) was astounded to find out YouTube was blocked for most of the employees, but not for him. They started posting instructional videos on YouTube and he only found out because his marketing guys couldn't open the videos they had created. The ban was gone within an hour, after it had been in place for who knows how long.

Enough websites break and you get the executives calling their IT guys saying "why doesn't this work for me, I need a new computer" and eventually things will get changed. In the meantime, a lot of IT departments hunker down and don't want to change anything because people ALWAYS complain when there is change.

Simple truism of office politics - if it is the executives idea it is "great", if it is the IT department's idea, it "sucks", regardless of technical merit.

A more relavant truism to the IE6 in business debacle is that upgrading a platform is costly and enhancing users' web-browsing experience is rarely a top priority.

Actually it's probably an anti-priority more often than a priority. I would not be particularly interested in making surfing the web a more enjoyable experience for my employees. The one thing that will end IE 6 is when Microsoft stops supporting it with security updates. Until then, I expect it to be a significant player in the browser market.

The enforced restriction (your suggestion is more of a passive aggressive one I know) of browsing is an oft cited reason for discontent among my more corporate, non-startup friends.

It seems to me a both an admission of defeat by management and a statement of distrust of employees when it is done.

True. And, I don't really have any employees, nor would I, I hope, work in a field where keeping people on old browsers makes business sense. But there may be such fields, and in those fields I don't see a likely cause of a big investment in technology updates until the old tech is truly untenable.

As XP users upgrade to new hardware they will get Win7 and IE8. This is a another reason why IE6 is finally going down (the others being FF's adoption and the rise of Chrome and Safari + the Mobile web).

I remember when people saying nobody needed another browser and Chrome would never get adoption.

I remember when people said nobody needed another search engine. I also remember people saying they definitely needed a better webmail option. Listen to your market, but not too much.

Yes, some people say stupid things, good point.

As someone who has spent some time as a web developer, I will be glad if/when IE disappears for good.

There are amazing browsers out there right now, but are most people looking?

Have we reached saturation point for people with enough technical skills to change their browser, or even know what a browser is?

according to this video, not quite yet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ

Chrome is only worthwhile because of the speed not only of its JavaScript VM but also the speed (and to a lesser extent, design) of its UI.

It's a night and day difference from Firefox on my machine. It's been _years_ since Chrome made it on the scene and the response from Mozilla is still abysmal; Firefox is still at least twice as slow than Chrom(e|ium) for me. Firefox's UI is still clunky and huge and slow; dragging tabs takes forever and breaking them out forces a page refresh (bad when watching videos etc).

If Mozilla doesn't want to get crushed by Chrome they need to put together a serious response and fix their issues. The only thing keeping users on Fx would be extensions, but equivalents are quickly showing up for Chrome. Mozilla is going to completely lose its relevance if they don't get real about fixing things.

I started up Ubuntu 10.04 and was disappointed to see Firefox as the default browser. I think Linux distros should use Chromium as the default.

It's also worthwhile because of its security model and process model.

There's still the issue of Chrome's addons not being as powerful as Firefox's. I dearly want to switch to Chrome (or ium), but I've grown quite attached to the Tree Style Tabs addon, and I've found the attempts to replicate that functionality in Chrome somewhat lacking. The speed difference is absolutely huge though. It's like opening MS Word vs Notepad: Chrome is just there, but Firefox takes at least a few seconds to open up, even without (m)any addons

Pretty close to what we're seeing:

   1. Internet Explorer  5,493,047    64.03% 	
   2. Firefox            1,796,239    20.94% 	
   3. Safari             742,371       8.65% 	
   4. Chrome             489,051       5.70% 	
   5. Opera               38,441       0.45% 	
   6. Mozilla              6,603       0.08% 	
   7. Mozilla Compatible   5,320       0.06% 	
   8. Playstation 3        1,710       0.02% 	
   9. Camino               1,142       0.01% 	
  10. Opera Mini             890       0.01%

For mobile, Safari is 86.88% and IE: 1.02% :)

Who said Apple doesn't have a de-facto monopoly in smartphones? For some definition of smartphone, they seem to own the market.

A very large market share isn't the same as a monopoly. People are very free to buy android phones or windows mobile or whatever they like.

Similarly, people are free to buy Mac OS, Ubuntu...

Perhaps. Could also be that iPhone owners are more likely to use their smartphone to browse the web. Anecdotally, I still see more Blackberries than iPhones.

> During April, only Internet Explorer and Opera failed to show positive growth.

It would have been quite a feat for them all to show positive growth :)

Does HN ever publish their browser stats? Would be interesting to see the breakdown.

It would be an interesting investigation into why Chrome and Firefox have done so well in growth and Opera (a quite nice browser) never seems to have done well.

Google pushes Chrome on the front page of Google.com. And they pushed Firefox for a few years before Chrome.

Also, Opera has a terrible name in comparison to the competition. Makes word of mouth less effective. That's also my theory on MySQL vs Postgres.

I'd kind of agree with you on the names. I can't even pronounce Postgres so I tend to sit quietly instead of recommending it when the topic comes up.

I'll be sure to run my next product name by you.

Just listen to this: http://twit.tv/floss18

TL;DL: It's Post-Grez-Que-Ell

Google also advertises Chrome in the Real World - e.g. several London tube stations are plastered with Chrome ads. I've not seen anything that high profile for Opera.

I tried Opera once a long time ago and it had ads in the browser. I became a firefox user and never looked back. Subsequently, firefox was the browser I'd recommend, etc..

It's interesting how that one experience completely changed your perception of Opera even now. Definitely applicable to startup life - don't take the easy monetization, it may come back to haunt you.

I agree. I think that there are all kinds of lessons to be learned from the Opera experiment, which is why I asked the question.

To be clear, I have no opinion about Opera now. My negative opinion expired a long time ago. Opera is merely one of the "browsers I don't use" in the same category as Konqueror, Safari, and Epiphany.

What it did was lose me at the only point it ever mattered for a product with a long life. Firefox has satisfied my needs since, and I've never had the will to evaluate Opera again.

Lots of little reasons probably. Didn't Opera have those built-in toolbar banner advertisements for a long time? That probably didn't help. I agree the naming has always been a problem. Not that Firefox, Chrome or Safari are more descriptive names but they at least do not associate themselves with an art form that is generally considered to be lame or elitist. (not sure I agree but that's the perception in the US at least) Then again, to this day, a lot of people seem to think it's actually pronounced Oprah which is probably equally confusing but less negative to most people.

I think Opera has historically focused on features that power users find interesting, maybe because most of their user-base is power users. But that has negative implications for mainstream adoption.

I disagree. Opera was also the browser than could fit on a 1.44mb floppy, it was always had the smallest footprint of browsers, as well as memory. The problem was the in the wild west of the web, a lot of pages didn't work quite right on Opera. So you always had to have IE or Netscape handy.

> it was always had the smallest footprint of browsers, as well as memory

So . . . features for power users, right?

> didn't work quite right on Opera

Sounds like something power users put up with more readily than most other people.

> have IE or Netscape handy.

Using more than one browser is something power users do.

>So you always had to have IE or Netscape handy.

That's a very interesting point. I guess when Opera first came out, it didn't quite work right, IE and Netscape were the 800 pound gorillas fighting it out, and Firefox simply inherited the mindshare of Netscape. Opera was simply a third dancer in a waltz.

The latest beta of Chrome for Mac (5.0.342.9 beta) has been crashing (or rather, freezing a few tabs and then not working right until I kill it) pretty often, but other than that, I'm very satisfied with the browser in general and all the past versions have been rock solid.

Could the person who down-voted me explain why? What's the problem with sharing my experience with Chrome?

60% is still huge.

What is important is that IE is no longer the de facto standard. 60% is much better than 90%. I remember 6-7 years ago when developers thought they were done when it worked in IE6. They didn't feel the need to support other browsers. Browsing in Linux was difficult because things never looked (or worked) right.

Now with so many options, developers need to target standards.

IE must have spell check!!!

netmarketshare has biased stats (very US centric). I prefer the wikipedia stats which is a generalist and international site. There, IE is already at 50% http://stats.wikimedia.org/archive/squid_reports/2010-02/Squ... yay!

Where is mobile in this? Is mobile safari a safari? Is it in all others? Something seems missing. (sent from my iPod)

The data seems to come from here: http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qpri... , which requires a subscription to see mobile statistics.

Mobile Safari counts as Safari, and the Android browser counts as Chrome. Not sure about Palm. Opera is used on a lot of mobile devices as well, especially those not quite smartphones.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com